Virtuous
by soulpelt1
Summary: A group of deadly parahumans chase after the deadliest group of Parahumans in North America. Their purpose is singular: revenge and retribution. What if he who fought monsters needed to become one. Rated M for blood, disturbing situations, excessive cursing and (probably)terrible writing. On hold for now
1. Chapter 1

This is a Fanfic based off of Worm(Which I do not own), one of the best web serials on the internet. If this story interests you should go the Worm main site. The link will be on my profile.

* * *

A woman in a navy blue suit sat at the table in a small room, lit by a single bare bulb. Leaving only her and the man opposite of her visible. Her eyes glowed a faint golden yellow, much the same color as the crystal lattices that ran across her skin, tracing the veins. Her short black hair was mostly covered by the hat she wore, as well as hid all but the eerie iridescence of her orbs in darkness. She finally spoke to person opposite of her, an older man, his chest wrapped in a bandage and a white cotton patch covering his left eye.

"Which of the Slaughterhouse 9 put you in this condition?" Her inhuman gaze seemed to pierce into the man's soul making him shiver.

"J-Jack Slash. One of his...um...'games'."

The woman nodded, not in any particular way of emotion, simply of acceptance.

"What kind of 'game'?" she asked, her voice as clear and beautiful as a midsummer sky, and yet there was obviously a darker element to it, bitter and angry.

"He...and the little blond girl..."

"Bonesaw."

"Yes, her...they strapped me and two others to spinning wheels. Slash, he was blindfolded and Bonesaw laid out some knives..." He seemed to turn a sickly shade of green, shuddering at the nightmare he had endured not a week earlier. The woman frowned, and in the darkness behind the male, a large, obese form moved closer, though who, or what, the shape belonged to was not revealed by the single bare light bulb.

A human voice with a French-Canadian accent seemed to slither from the lumpy shape.

"Should I relax him, or just end it?" The voice let out a dark chuckle but the woman shook her head.

"No, Pierre, let's see what Erik here has to say," the finely clad woman scolded, and holding up a golden latticed hand, there was a large crystal cluster in her palm, the color as the vein-like lattices that covered her face and the back of her hand. The obese form seemed to nod and backed off. "Continue, if you will. Erik."

The man nodded his face less green but much more pale from fright.

"Jack said he was going to choose a knife at random, he...he chose a butcher knife, like the ones you always see him carrying." Erik shuddered again. "He spun around several times to add more 'fun' to his game. He stopped and...pointed the knife at the person next to me. A yo-young Japanese or Chinese lady, not even twenty five. He slashed the knife at her and..." Erik's face turned sickly green again, his breaths becoming more and more rapid.

The woman in blue sighed, annoyed at the mans weak stomach. "Make him relax, Pierre."

There came a delightfully disturbed chuckle from the obese man behind Erik, whose eyes went wide and skin even paler. "N-No, please I-" His protests were cut short as he shuddered, as if impaled with a spear. His breathing instantly became calm and deep, eyes placid and distant, as if he was seeing something far away.

"Thank you, Pierre."

The fat man seemed to nod again and backed up once more.

"Now, Erik...tell me what happened." The woman said with a soft grin. Too bad Erik here would die once the organ on his back was removed. It made someone completely honest and able to recall anything in an instant, but the trauma to the nervous system either killed the host or rendered them braindead.

Oh well, there were plenty of other 'recruits' in Phoenix. The woman hoped this city would rise like its namesake from the ashes the Nine had spread, and in Burnscars case, literally.

"Jack Slash, he bisected the woman. Severed her clear in half. She was alive just long enough to see her organs fall out. Bonesaw giggled and said something about a 'belly ache.'" Erik spoke in a dull, uninterested voice. "Bonesaw released the woman's bonds, and three mechanical spiders took the corpse. I screamed and so did the other person, an teenage African-American boy. He called Jack and Bonesaw, 'Goddamn motherfucking freaks'. Bonesaw gasped and pointed at the teenager saying, 'No swearing in front of a child!'" The woman smirked grimly. Among the Nine, Bonesaw was the most dangerous, as Pierre could testify. "Jack spun around again, and when he stopped,he picked up a butter knife - it had been sharpened slightly, probably enough to give a small cut under normal circumstances." The woman put a crystal laden hand on her chin, her face showing obvious boredom. She hated it whenever Pierre had to use one of his little customized organs, even though she and every other member of their little 'group' had them.

"He point the blade at me and attacked - I felt my clothes and flesh being cut. As my chest was covered in wounds, one of the his attacks hit my eye, blinding me." That explained the eye patch. Bonesaw was known for taking the eyes of her victims, no doubt for more of her 'fun'. "I passed out after that, the last thing I heard was Jack saying I had 'won a prize'. When I awoke I was in triage center, being patched up."

The woman sighed gently and motioned with her hand for Pierre to remove the organ from Eriks back. The lumbering shape behind Erik reached out and tore off the organ. The effect was almost immediate.

"Wh-what hap-" Erik asked, as if just waking up. He never got to finish his question. He suddenly seized up, eyes rolling and foam beginning to form in his mouth. His seizing stopped just as suddenly as it started, and he fell out of his seat.

With a small smile, slightly on the sadistic side the woman spoke, "You can take the body, Pierre. I'm sure you can use it in your lab. Remember, no sentients for now. Wait till we hit Tealrock."

Pierre grinned, and a large hand gripped the now braindead Erik by his ankle. He opened the door, and the light from the hallway revealed his rather ugly form. His body was morbidly obese, and yet also highly muscled. His most prominent feature was his massive gut, easily three-quarters his size. It probably accounted for most of his weight. His face, however, was almost frog-like in appearance. His mouth was at least four times what it should've been, fangs protruding down, and the flesh around his lips looked stained with blood. His eyes were large, obviously enhanced beyond any human capacity, baseline or parahuman.

His nose was the most normal looking - and disconcerting - feature of his face, small and disturbingly human-like.

"See you later, Lisa," Pierre said, with a twisted smile that revealed his numerous and extremely sharp small teeth. He left, closing the door behind him. Lisa sighed annoyed, stood up, and left the room. Down the hall she could hear Pierre singing loudly. It seemed he was having fun.

* * *

Lisa headed in the opposite direction Pierre did, her high heels clicking against dirty tile floor. She and her group had settled down in this run down, and half burned out, apartment complex. Burn marks from Burnscars attacks were still fresh, along with claws marks that were as long as her arm, Crawlers work, and blood splatters that seemed to cover entire rooms, either Jack Slash or Bonesaws doing.

Jack. The thought of him made her frown. she glanced down at her crystal lined. In some ways she could almost thank him, she was probably among the most powerful Capes in the world, but not very well known. Not yet at least. "Soon though...we'll be as feared as those monsters." Lisa said to the empty air.

She stopped walking when she came to the only cleaned room in the entire complex. There was a large eye-like creature on the wall, held up by four spiked 'feet'. Wires connected to the strange by way of tendrils. A quick creation of Pierre so they could keep up with the local news. In front of the 'eye' there were seven semi-cleaned chairs in a half-circle, around a medium sized coffee table that had several state and city maps. Her glowing eyes surveyed the room and stopped on a woman covered in severe burns, angry red wounds that would never heal, never feel anything again. Strangely enough she wore a white t-shirt and blue jean shorts.

"Roseline, I miss anything?" Lisa asked the burn victim who shook her head, turned to face the suited woman. "No, not really. More news coverings on the Slaughterhouse Nine attack." A surprisingly beautiful voice came from the burn covered woman who walked stiffly over to Lisa. "Where's James and Stephen? On watch?"

"Yeah, James is covering the roof and Stephen's got the back. Albert is out getting supplies. I think we're all sick of Pierres 'grub'" Roseline said with a shiver. "It might be nutritional, but it tastes like bile."

Lisa laughed and shook her head. "He'd be heartbroken to know you don't enjoy Grubby Mondays." Roseline waved it away with a burned hand.

"You get anything out of that Erik guy?" She asked, moving to take a seat down in her chair.

"Afraid not. Pierre had to 'calm' him. Sad though, really. He had such potential, too. There are others, though. We have an entire city to recruit from." Lisa said with small grin as her eyes looked to the burned woman. Roseline was watching the 'television'. "I'm going to check up on James and Stephen."

"'Kay boss." Roseline said giving a stiff, and brief, wave to Lisa.

As she left the room and headed to the roof via the organic elevator grown by Pierre, the man loved to show how his organic technology was superior to mechanical. The pod that was the 'carriage' closed and as it went up Lisa wondered why Roseline chose such an unexciting power set. Lisa looked down at her hand, palm up, the golden crystal cluster glowed with unearthly light. With her current charge whoever was chosen to be part of their group would be quite powerful, no matter what they chose as a power.


	2. Gluttony

I don't own Worm, 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts', 'I get a kick out of you' or 'Little Drop of Poison'

* * *

Pierre hummed to himself as he reached up on the shelf and grabbed a growing dog heart. What was formerly Erik had been laid out before him, and all around the autopsy table, fleshy columns pulsed with life, bioluminescent, glowing in random patterns. Pink tendrils were attaching themselves to Eriks corpse, integrating their systems into his.

"Your story is too sad to be told,

but practically everything has left you totally cold.

The exception I know is the case,

when I'm out on a killing spree,

fighting vainly the old ennui,

and I suddenly turn

and see your fabulous face,"

Pierre crooned as he grabbed a skin sack, dark purple, filled with some kind of liquid, and tore open the bottom. Its contents flowed out clear, and when the liquid hit the skin of Erik's face, it instantly began to eat it away to the bone. In a matter of seconds, what had been Erik's head was now a bare skull.

Pierre grinned wide and continued to sing,

"I get no kick from a nip and zip.

Mere surgery doesn't give me a fix.

So tell me why should it be true

That I get a kick out of working on you?"

He reached over to a blood covered table, snatching up what looked to be a bone-like blade. Returning to his tune, the obese man severed the dead one's skull from the spinal column with surgical care. He cracked open the bone with ease, drawing out the precious pink matter of the brain. His humming echoed in the mostly silent room; the only noise was Pierre's singing. Three pulsing ropes of flesh wrapped around the precious organ, and it was brought up to one of the columns, a pod quickly forming and filling with a natural preservative.

With the best part of the human body removed, Pierres tone changed from jovial to dark and perverted.

"Some, they may go for anesthesia .

I'm sure that if I used even one drop

It would bore me terribly so!

Yet I get a kick out of working on you!"

Pierre took the blade and, with two vicious cuts and a tug, he pulled off the cadaver's clothes. His grin grew wider as he went about dissecting the body. Peeling apart the muscles and skin, he moved to get a better look at the inside. The tendrils that were in the corpse had been draining the blood, making it much less of a mess for Pierre to tinker with - which, while not very fun, made it easier to stay hidden whenever they had to leave a city or town.

"I get a kick every time I see

You laying there dead before me.

I get a kick though it's clear to see

You obviously have nothing for me."

The terrifying Tinker stopped singing and sighed, annoyed. He was a genius at any type of organic system. He could bring the dead back to life, create deadly plagues, and make a living counterpart to any piece of technology, if given the right materials. However, he was no musician.

"I'm still working on that one, Erik," he said as he picked up the man's skull, his unnaturally huge eyes looking into the sockets. "Sad, isn't it? I could take your brain and transplant it into someone else with minimum fuss, and yet I can't properly twist a song." He chuckled and tossed the bone into a corner, where it joined various bits of unused organic materials. "Now...let's make you a mobile mini-lab. My last one was blown apart. Some small time hero slammed a car into it," he explained to the headless body, looking around for the various bits he needed. He quickly removed the white rib cage, exposing all the vital organs that lay within.

A fat hand reached up and gingerly gripped a specialized organ, one he'd designed to act like his Tinker ability on a smaller scale. Able to break down nearly anything organic into basic parts such skin, bones, hair, blood, the works, it resembled an oversized stomach, but one with a single large import valve and ten export valves, each one specialized for a certain type of material.

"Let's get rid of this old thing...you're not going to be a mobile weapons platform." The Tinker removed Erik's stomach, tossing it next to the man's skull, where it landed near the bottom with a wet 'plop'. He settled the new organ where the stomach had once been, his free hand finding a vial of milky white liquid, placing it on the bloodied table, he would save that for later, right now he needed to put the rest of the organs inside, and then grow a light to place on Erik's neck.

Going back to humming, he turned around and went to a large shelving unit full of stored organs. All of them were organized by function. With another large smile, revealing his sharp little teeth, the Tinker began to sing,

"Down at a Phoenix fair, one evening I was there,

When I heard a Tinker shouting underneath the flair

I've got a lovely bunch of organs

There they are, all stored in a row

Big ones, small ones, there's yours right there

Ain't they a twist, a flick of my wrist,

That's what the Tinker said!"

Pierre grabbed two jars, one held a six chambered heart that had five valves the other contained what appeared to be a bit of small intestine, but the texture was more scaley and had thousands of tiny hooks lining the interior. He looked around for the cart he had been using earlier in the day, spotted it still holding the body a three year old girl on the bottom level. The fat man fetched the cart and was soon back at the shelves, looking for organs.

Luckily there were many corpses still around, Bonesaw had unleashed a quick acting, a fast dying, plague in the neighborhood they were set up in. This plague had two benefits for him - it left many a body to tinker with, and said bodies were immune to natural decomposition. It also helped that he got a peek at her handiwork, that crazy little bitch!...Well she would get hers. Greed had given him his Tinker power, and he was going to put it to good use.

"I've got a lovely bunch of organs

Every breath you breathe will make me stitch

Here is my knife, the tool to end your life

Slashing, left and right, without a hitch."

With each word he grabbed more jars, some containing the organs of various animals and people, others ones he had genetically engineered and grown. He hummed the tune as more jars joined their brethren. Already the number of jars filled the top of the cart, leaving only the middle shelf unfilled.

"Slashing, left and right, without a hitch

Slashing, left and right, without a hitch

Slashing, left and right, without a hitch

Laughing, slashing, left and right, without a hitch

Pierre finished filling the cart with jars, now humming the song. He pushed the cart over to the table. He looked over the cadaver and grabbed the dead girl from bottom shelf of the cart. She was a pretty thing, curly brown hair and dead eyes that were probably a nice shade of green. He stripped the girl of her blood soaked clothing and several clawed tendrils wrapped around the naked body and lifted it up.

"I've got a lovely bunch of organs

There they are, all stored in a row

Big ones, small ones, there's yours right there

Ain't they a twist a flick of my wrist

That's what the showman said!"

Pierre took his bonescalpel and cut the girl's young dead body vertically from her throat to just under her belly button. Several seconds later all of her internal organs fell to the floor with a wet sound. He had plans for her. Nothing malicious; more like using her to explore the outlying area of Phoenix. That could wait though.

"First things first...lets get you outfitted. Say, Erik, would you object to having your internal organs replaced?" He asked the body on the table. He waited a few moments as if waiting for a reply. "I'll take that as a 'no'." He cackled madly, his frog-like mouth growing into a grin far beyond any human capacity. "Hmm...Forced Adaptation or Genetic Rewriting organ. Maybe both? That way you could eat a cat and spit out a six legged monstrosity!" Pierre cackled again.

Opening several jars, the mad Tinker began to place the contents in their proper place, removing all of the original organs. "Now where was I...Oh yes!"

"I've got a lovely bunch of organs

Every breath you breathe will make me stitch

Here is my knife, the tool to end your life

Slashing left and right without a hitch."

Pierre then started to stitch together the organs with his signature purely organic hair-wire. It was an idea he got from watching 'The Thing', released not too long before Scion appeared. An organic substance that could mimic any cell structure perfectly when stimulated by a bio-electric charge. It made his job ten times easier.

Before too long the inside of Erik's body resembled nothing like that of a humans. Where was once the heart was a collection of ebony muscles, all stitched together and held it place by a shell of spiked bone. Around the muscles were even more alien innards, most predominate was the massive sac-like viscus that took up more than two-thirds of the cadavers trunk. "Now what kind of head should I give you? Dog? Raven? How about a giant leech head?" His now preservative covered hands went to each of the jars that contained the head in question. The leech head look terribly disturbing. It had a circular mouth filled with thousands of serrated teeth curved inward to hold in meat, these teeth continued down it's neck/throat until the natural end. It also had yellow eyes running down both flanks. "Hmmm...think I'll go with the lamprey." He had grown the head special, mostly to cause chaos.

Pierre grabbed the jar that contained the leech head opened it up, placing the monstrous thing on Erik's neck. He quickly stitched it up, knowing the undifferentiated cells would quickly adapt so cellular bonding could occur. Cellular rejection was something he had overcame early on. Was a necessity with his specialization, no good to have your creations falling apart due to the cells fighting each other. Especially when said creations were made from, sometimes, dozens of organisms, from different animal groups. Needless to say, what he had was something every surgeon in the world would pay an arm and a leg to get their grubby little hands on...and of course that bitch Bonesaw would want it too. Make her own little abominations look natural and even more deadly. He sneered at the thought of that medical Tinker. In some ways Pierre knew he was better than Bonesaw. In terms of requiring mechanical assistance his creations needed little to none. His own plagues could match hers, maybe little bit less creative. One thing he couldn't do yet was combine dead capes. He had heard rumors of Bonesaws various little projects, and if Pierre had his way he would be making his own, then using them to murder Bonesaw and the rest of the Slaughterhouse 9.

Pierre shook his head of those thoughts. He needed to focus on the task at hand. This project had to be both a gatherer and mobile lab. There was minimum room for trunk weapons, and the newly sewed on leech head could only hold so much. That left the arms, legs and pelvis. Arms would need to be lengthened, fingers turned into claws, and extra legs added for stability. The pelvis would hold the 'birthing' organ, the monstrous head couldn't be used to regurgitate any creations, the teeth would simply hold them in. With a small smile, Pierre went back to working on what was once Erik.

A teenage girl with curly red hair and bright green eyes walked out of the front of the burned out apartment complex. She had pale white skin and freckles, the classical appearance of an Irish or Scottish woman. She was dressed in clothes that were obviously damaged, a dark blue t-shirt with the the sleeves torn and muddy, her jeans slightly bloodied and dark with a few spots of ash. Her shoes were in no better condition - blood, mud and ash had hardly left any of the original color. She blinked several times and walked off.

She passed by the triage center, people still coming in with burns, cuts and infections, the usual assortment of ailments that accompanied a Slaughterhouse Nine attack. Even a week later, things were in disarray, more than half of Phoenix's heroes and villains dead, those left were wounded or fighting among themselves. The few heroes that were left had their hands full with looters, baseline and parahuman gangs, and so many wounded to attend to.

Her green eyes looked around, as if taking in every sight for the first time. She gazed at the triage camp, tired nurses and doctors rushing around to treat those who couldn't wait and to reassure those who could. Needless to say, some of the more impatient people looked like they were ready to riot. She gave an almost bored shrug and started to walk again, towards one of the few roads that hadn't been destroyed by the battle between Crawler and Valley, one of the local PRT heroes.

Back at the apartment complex, Pierre's fat form sat in desk chair that barely contained him, visibly straining, the chair itself situated in front of large brain-like organ that pulsed with bioluminescence and little arcs of bio-electricity, with a plastic device that had wire sticking into the soft matter of the huge mass of living material.

"Alright then, little Amelia...we need to leave Phoenix and then head to Tealrock." Pierre's hammy hands were enclosed in airtight pods folds that allowed him to control 'Amelia's' movements, and he could talk into microphone that was connected like the transmission device . Pierres' fingers moved inside the pods and Amelia started working. Along with letting him control her movements and giving him the ability to see through her eyes, it also allowed him, if he chose so, to release the little surprises he had stored within Amelia's trunk.

Amelia still walked, with an air of uncaringness that was unnatural in Phoenix, especially in the aftermath of the S9 attack. She finally got to the halfway point, after having to go through six detours and an area where Burnscar and Fever, a local villainess, had duked it out. The battleground had been melted, glassed and blown up to the point it was had to tell it had once been a rather large factory. Fever had brought it to a draw, both her and Burnscar wounded. Even now Fever was recovering in her lair, wherever it was. Amelia continued to walk, leaving the ruined factory behind her.

It wasn't much longer before the young woman had reached the main road out of Phoenix. The city had been effectively cut off from land vehicles, a large battle between Crawler and Valley had destroyed the other main roads, the smaller ones were too dangerous between villain fighting, in-fighting, pockets of disease and debris that would take months to clear up.

There was a military and Protectorate cordon on the road, high in the air one of Dragons UAVs flew, it's metal hull shining in the sunlight. On the ground were several dozen PRT officers and two capes, both were of the remaining Phoenix heroes, Blackjack and Wander. Orders were to allow some people in and out, and Pierre had made sure Amelia here could sneak past even Dragons watchful eye. It had been difficult, that's for sure; fooling mechanical senses was harder when one didn't have access to the machines code, and he was no robotics expert, even if integrating mechanical and organic systems was relatively simple for him.

Pierre knew that most of the sewers in and out of Phoenix were untouched by the Slughterhouse 9 attack, and so that was his best bet for Amelia getting out of the city. He moved his hands and Amelia turned into an alley, it was partially cut off by debris, however. There was a hole in the ground that revealed the sewer system; the once running water was now stagnant and full of unholy diseases. With a smile Amelia got down into the water, the nasty liquid up to her waist, then suddenly she seemed to 'deflate'. The top half of her body went instantly limp and fell backwards into the miasmic water as her legs moved of their own accord into the pipe. With a sudden jerk, the legs started to move, crawling deeper into the septic water, dragging the now limp upper half with it. It wouldn't be long before the meat puppet was in Tealrock, causing chaos and softening up the little town.

As his little pet crawled through the disgusting water, Pierre smiled wide, his small sharp teeth glinting in the living lights. "I like my town, with a little drop of poison..." Then he started to hum the rest of the song, making adjustments to Amelia's course as needed. Once she was outside the septic system Pierre would go and get himself some food, more out of habit than need. For right now, though, he would just simply wait and think on what all he would need for when they attacked Tealrock.


End file.
